Daws Butler
Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler (November 16, 1916, Toledo, Ohio, USA – May 18, 1988, Culver City, California, USA) was an American voice actor who specialized in voicing animated films and television series. He worked mostly for the Hanna-Barbera animation production company where he originated the voices of many familiar characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound. Starting with The Three Little Pups, Butler provided the voice for a nameless wolf that spoke in a Southern accent and whistled all the time. This character also appeared in Sheep Wrecked, Billy Boy and many more cartoons. While at MGM, Avery wanted Butler to try to do the voice of Droopy, at a time when Bill Thompson had been unavailable due to radio engagements. Instead, Butler recommended Don Messick, another actor and Butler's lifelong friend, who could imitate Thompson. Thus Messick voiced Droopy in several shorts. In 1949, Butler landed a role in a televised puppet show created by former Warner Bros. cartoon director Bob Clampett called Time for Beany. Butler was teamed up with Stan Freberg, and together they did all the voices of the puppets. Butler voiced Beany Boy and Captain Huffenpuff. Freberg voiced Cecil and Dishonest John. An entire stable of recurring characters were seen. The show's writers were Charles Shows and Lloyd Turner, whose dependably funny dialog was still always at the mercy of Butler's and Freberg's ad libs. Time for Beany ran from 1949 to 1954 and won several Emmy Awards. Butler briefly turned his attention to writing and voicing several TV commercials. In the 1950s, Stan Freberg asked him to help him write comedy skits for his Capitol Records albums. Their first collaboration, "St. George and the Dragon-Net" (based on Dragnet), was the first comedy record to sell over one million copies. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies, but the bulk of his dialogue routines were co-written by and co-starred Butler. He teamed up again with Freberg and actress June Foray in a CBS radio series, The Stan Freberg Show, which ran from July to October 1957 as a summer replacement for Jack Benny's program. Freberg's box-set, Tip of the Freberg (Rhino Entertainment, 1999) chronicles every aspect of Freberg's career except the cartoon voice-over work, and it showcases his career with Daws Butler. In Mr. Magoo, the UPA theatrical animated short series for Columbia Pictures, Butler played Magoo's nephew Waldo (also voiced by Jerry Hausner at various times). He provided the voices of many nameless Walter Lantz characters for theatrical shorts later seen on the Woody Woodpecker program. His most notable characters were the penguin Chilly Willy and his sidekick Smedley, a southern-speaking dog (the same voice used for Tex Avery's laid-back wolf character). In 1957, after MGM had closed down their animation division, producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera quickly formed their own company, and Daws Butler and Don Messick were on-hand to provide voices. The first, The Ruff and Reddy Show, with Butler voicing Reddy, set the formula for the rest of the series of cartoons that the two would helm until the mid-1960s. He played the title roles in The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Quick Draw McGraw Show and The Yogi Bear Show, as well as a variety of other characters. Category:Actors from USA